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Occupy Wall Street Movement

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Running head: OCCUPY WALL STREET

Assignment #1 Occupy Wall Street Movement
Brenda Bryant
Dr. Obi. Iwuanyanwu
BUS309 Business Ethics
October 5, 2012

Discuss the moral and economic implications involved in the movement.
The Occupy movement was a protest that gathered local organizers, students, and activists in response to the economic disparity of countries around the world. The protest gained momentum after a continuous series of protests took place in Zuccotti Park in New York City's Wall Street financial district (Manhattan) on September 17th, 2011, where it was named Occupy Wall Street (OWS).
This is an international protest movement where the moral foundation of the OWS Movement appears to be focused around fairness, care, and liberty from oppression. The main moral issues are against social and economic inequality, greed, corruption, and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS primary goal is to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer. The majority view of the protesters and moral implications is to fight for more government involvement and concern for the 99 percent that are not rich.
OWS protesters believe the economic system is not fair and is set up in way such that now only the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. The rich--those on Wall Street (“the “1 percent”) got rich by taking without giving. OWS protesters view the rich as cheaters who often exploited their way to the top. They further suggested that the taxpayers had to bail out the “1 percent” after they crashed the economy. The moral economic implication is that “…they really owe us [the taxpayers] for saving their necks. It’s high time they started paying what they owe.” (Haidt, 2011)

http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/30/the-moral-foundations-of-occupy-wall-str

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